Ah-ha, Oh-no...............

Who remembers the Serendipity Singers, and was that song, of 1964, their only claim to international stardom? (If you're under about 55, you'll have absolutely no idea whatsoever of what I'm talking about! If you're going to keep on reading, then perhaps you'd better click onto this: YouTube clip )

The only thing that frightens me about living here in Luxor is the ever present threat of rain!! Now then, I know that that will sound ludicrous to many of you lot, but we do get rain here; sometimes (mostly, actually) it rains for about a minute and by the time you realise that you've felt raindrops and not bird poop, it's stopped again. Nevertheless, sometimes it does really rain! Like rain in England, or even like rain in Wales, for heavens sake! That's when I leap out of bed in blind panic!

Let me explain a little further. Our small rooftop hovel doesn't have a 'permanent' roof; it's not allowed to have one as it's only classed as a 'temporary structure'. So, when we had it converted from the original chicken and goat penthouse, we stipulated a wooden roof; after all, this is Egypt man, no rain! As I've said on here before, ignorance is bliss.

When the rain actually did come down like stair-rods, we were flooded out. It was like walking around in a very large shower/wet-room affair. Much of the accumulated dust from the roof, and the inner roof space, was washed down the interior walls, and the whole place had to be repainted. You know how I dread the thought of wall painting, so you can sympathise with my newfound dread of the rain as well.

As I was typing away at yesterday's blog, the rain was coming and going. It wasn't heavy enough to permeate through the heat-warped timbers, layers of Sahara sand and expanded polystyrene insulation, but I was afeared of going to bed in case it got worse. It did get worse, and Freda and I raced about, either covering things with waterproof sheets or transferring them to the guest apartment, which luckily was not occupied.

Polythene sun-block curtains can come in handy during rainstorms, no matter what anyone says:

 That's the bottom end of our bed!

                                         And that's the floor on my side!

Thankfully, the interior walls haven't taken too much hurt this time, although those outside will have to be repainted. (Actually, they were due anyway.)

                        Can you see the puddles on the roof across the road?

We've spent today cleaning up, obviously, and the washing machine hasn't stopped. Tonight we're sleeping downstairs, it's only till we get our own place spick and span again, and we expect to be back in our own bed tomorrow night (or even during the day, if I get my way, you know that I need little naps now and then). 

Travel DIY?

That's the title of a post on the TripAdvisor Luxor Forum today. I thought that I'd offer the person some light DIY, just to keep his hand in, so to speak, but it wasn't about DIY at all!

I've been a bit busy with my own DIY over the past couple of days, I'll show you later on. Meanwhile, here's a picture that I've wanted to take for some time, only the opportunity hasn't arisen before now:

Suppose that walking on the top of a ladder is sort of similar to stilt-walking, but I think I'll just give it a miss, thank you very much! I well remember the stilts that we had as children, great fun, even if we did pick up a few bruised knees now and then.

These next two aren't exactly DIY. This building, just down on Gold Street, has had men working on it, on and off, for several weeks now. I really am stumped as to what sort of end result they will accomplish with barely enough floor space to have a staircase in it, and being three storeys high! The steel and chicken-wire framework will hold some fancy plasterwork, eventually. Time will reveal all, I suppose.

I didn't tell you about Mohamed Marble, did I? Well, he's the 'stone man' who eventually provided the Aswan granite for the guest apartment kitchen surfaces, a nice, genuine bloke! Well, we've been wanting to do something with the top surface of the cupboard which we use for the guest's breakfast buffet 'cause when the crisp white linen table cloth is removed; it really is quite an eyesore:

We tried the second-hand man up on New TV Street, a while ago, but the stone he had wasn't the right size and I thought it was too expensive for old stuff anyway. How right I was proven to be! Mohamed Marble came up trumps, 115le for the stone (it's the cheapest type, mind you) and 35le for delivery. I complained about the cost of the delivery, but he made a bit of a face and a gesture indicating our 83 stairs, and I relented! (Too soft to make claggy toffee!) In the event, I left Mohamed and the carrier at the street door, as I went and prepared the way for them up onto the roof. After a few minutes, I was wondering where they had gotten to, so started back down. I found Mohamed, two flights down, desperately trying to fill his lungs with enough air to get the oxygen back into the blood which was racing around his overly large body. The carrier had refused to help him up the stairs, and he had carried it himself! I offered to help him up those last two flights, but he wouldn't have it, he'd been paid to deliver, and deliver he would! (Even if it killed him, apparently.)

This new marble top for the breakfast buffet cupboard was only a part of the latest project! Freda has been getting increasingly tired of seeing the ugly satellite dish, which is just over the wall near to the breakfast buffet, so she wanted it screened off, somehow.

Ever compliant, I stepped up to the challenge; "Can we fix it? Yes we can!" (No, nothing to do with 'Jim'll Fix It', certainly not with the latest revelations.) Another sheet of the Islamic patterned stuff, I think! As you know, there's no B&Q or Wicks here, and if you want wood, then you need to find a carpenter who has a tree to cut up, or go to young Mina over the railway and buy his overpriced stuff, which is full of shakes anyway! Good old Abdu, at Karnak, saved the day, yet again. In three days, he managed to squeeze in the production of 15 pieces of varying length timber, to my specification, with which to construct my design.

I started with it at about 4am on Thursday morning? It being the anniversary of the birthday of Muhammad, the Muslims were celebrating in their usual fashion; considerately playing music at full volume while chanting verses, also at full loudspeaker volume, from the Quran ALL NIGHT LONG!

The mitre box I brought from B&Q at Dunston was a real boon, as I had quite a few mitred corners to construct. Like a real DIYer, I nearly had my fore-finger off four times!

As you might notice from the position of the nicks on my finger; I got increasingly faster at getting it out of the way of the sawblade each time it jumped out of the mitre box! My word! That Nu-Skin is grand stuff.

Anyway, here's the first glimpse of my latest efforts, I got it this far by about 11pm on Thursday:

I've purposely left the wood in its natural state, no colour or varnish. Like the air-conditioner covers, I'll let the timber darken naturally, for a year or so, before varnishing; and that's another little job which I accomplished earlier this week, as well, they look lovely! I think I've earned a day off.

Dummler's Dinner?

This short post was prompted by the comment, on the last posting, from Steve Small. (I know it has nothing to do with Luxor, but I'm feeling a little nostalgic!)

When Steve and I were younger, there was a period when we dined at Dummler's Cafe every week-day. The Dummlers were a quite famous family, and had been in the cafe trade in Gateshead for many a long year. Their original premises were in central Gateshead, on Sunderland Road, and not a stone's throw from the very busy High Street. When the town centre went through one of its many re-development phases, Dummler's cafe was knocked down, along with the Essoldo and Ritz picture houses, to make way for the burgeoning industries of the 'Dole' and the 'Nash' (National Assistance) which moved into the towering office blocks and which still scar the town today!

By the time we had found this gem of an eating establishment, it had been relocated to Deckham, which is about a half mile due North from the original. It was now on Old Durham Road, which as the name might suggest to many, was the A1 of former years, the Great North Road which ran from London to Edinburgh. It was now run by the second generation of Dummlers, which consisted of Jimmy and wife Joan, and Jimmy's sister (whose name has, just this second, disappeared from my memory!!). Sometimes they were added to by Jimmy's brother Fred, who sadly eventually committed suicide.

The cafe was a converted downstairs 'Tyneside' flat, the front room and the small back bedroom were diningrooms and the big back room was now the very busy and bustling kitchen, it was marvellous! What fun we had in there.

They had a very wide ranging clientèle, from pensioners and labourers to insurance salesmen and local businessmen. Sometimes there would be up to 8 or 9 in our group when we descended on the place en-masse.

The menu was quiet wide ranging, from lovely Cholesterol sandwiches filled with greasy bacon, to three course lunches (hence Steve's reference to Dummler's Dinners). They had never cooked dumplings as part of the menu, but between the gang of us, we eventually persuaded them to do so. Being vigorous young men, who expended large amounts of energy in our chosen work, we usually had to have 'double' dinners to satisfy our appetites, so with the onset of the dumplings, we would ask for a 'Dummler's Double Dumpling Dinner' much to the amusement of Joan Dummler who usually had the unenviable task of serving us all. I once persuaded her to make me a turnip sandwich, which was delicious, but she went mad when she saw that I'd added it to the hand-written menu, with a price tag of 8 pence!!!! Happy days!

Among the many characters who dined there with any regularity, were Old Fred White and his mate Walter Tindale. These two could keep any audience enthralled for hours with their tales!

Fred had deserted while in the Far East during the war, and had become a very successful gangster in Malaya, or somewhere over there, I cannot quite remember now. After being caught and incarcerated in Lucknow Military Prison for a while, he escaped from a hospital (to where he had been transferred with a self-inflicted cigarette burn on his penis, which he told them he feared was syphilis) and wasn't actually caught again until he was badly injured in a knife fight in Aberdeen, after which he served his sentence on Dartmoor! Over the years, Fred and I spent many a freezing day, huddled over the old pot-bellied stove in my garage, while he recounted tales from different times in his life. By then, of course, he was a very different, old, bloke who was scratching a living cutting up old scrap cars with a large chopping axe!

Likewise with 'Little' Walter, who had been a great horse trader when he was younger, his tales of the goings on at the annual Appleby Horse Fair were sometimes difficult to believe, but I'm sure they were actually true. The gathered throng would be on the floor with laughing, what a character he was! He'd tell us of local characters who also fancied themselves as 'horsey men' and were therefore at the Fair; like Billy 'Sugar' Kelly, the coalman (who was also a regular in Dummler's) who would play his ukelele banjo accompanying Fred 'Boy' Nelson, the fruiterer from Windy Nook, singing and playing his accordion. I'd have paid money to see that, as I knew them both, and they seemed such an unlikely pairing!

Actually, I remember one day in Dummler's when 'Sugar' leapt up, from the table, exclaiming that he couldn't continue with his meal as he suddenly felt sick, because he'd caught sight of the arrival of one Robert Kelly, his brother, and a rival coal merchant; they hated each other with a vengeance!

One of the old pensioners used to go in there three times every day; once for his soup, then a bit later for his main course, and then later again for his pudding! The place was a haven for so many characters, the likes of which we'll never see again, I'm sorry to say.

Later on, Steve took a job as a barman at a local hostelry called 'The Plough' at Deckham, where many of these local coal/horseymen and other general wastrels drank. As each one's turn to pay for the drinks came around, a huge wad of notes would be theatrically pulled from the trouser pocket, so that all and sundry could see the wealth of whosoever's turn it was! They were worse show-offs than schoolboys.

Ah well, back to the present, I suppose! Freda has discovered a new 'project' for me to engage with, so I'd better look willing. You'll get to find out all about it. eventually. TTFN.

What's for dinner Mam?

We have a relatively simple diet, here in Luxor, which mainly revolves around minced beef, chicken breasts, eggs, cheese, beautiful Egyptian spuds and bread, and various bits and bobs to go with the above.  I think I've previously mentioned the lovely mushrooms from Kheir Zaman, which go just spiffingly with scrambled eggs on toast, among other things. Of course we also sample the popular take-away Egyptian fare, Mr Osman's falafel, hawawashi from Karnak, and kofta from Chez Omar, occasionally. We cannot complain about not getting enough nourishment or anything; I've put on two stones in the last 6 years!

It was my Mother's birthday, a week ago, and I remember one of the few things which used to drive her mad was trying to think of what to get, and cook, for meals. When we were little, I don't think it was much of a problem, as I'm almost sure that our weekly menu didn't hardly change, if at all! Like most fortunate children, I loved my Mother's cooking, except for Sunday dinners when we were forced to eat 'steepy' peas; I hated them!!!!

Even after I started working, and the old man and I would go home every lunchtime for a proper dinner and a substantial pudding, I'm almost sure that we had the same week on week. I can still conjure up the smells and tastes of some of my favourite dishes, mmmmmmmmmm! So, it must have been after Dad died, and she eventually married our good friend and neighbour, Alan, that the menu difficulties started.  

We have asked Adam, if his wife would cook some chicken breasts for us, using her special spices, which so enhance the flavour. Eager to show hospitality and friendship, as usual, he readily agreed......but! But they have no butane gas for cooking, that was two days ago and they still don't have any. A man and wife and four growing sons managing on cold fare, and it's still winter here, mind you. The poor of Luxor have very little choice of what to eat, but as long as they get something; they're reasonably content! Our long-time Egyptian friend, Mr Gomah, once told me that in Egypt, 'the life' was very hard, I just thought that it was one of his interminable moans, at the time, but I'm now realising more and more of exactly what he meant.

Enough of that doom and gloom stuff, I didn't get where I am today by concentrating on all that doom and gloom stuff!!!!! (A bit of a sort of a colloquialism there; The "I didn't get where I am today by..." part is lifted from an ancient British TV sitcom called "The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin", which was hilarious at the time.)

I started the day, today, in thankfulness (again!) that we chose to live right here, on the East Bank of the Nile. This morning, the West Bank had disappeared again!

I got to thinking that it must be akin to living in Brigadoon, being stuck over there and the landscape coming and going at will!

We splashed out this afternoon, and spent 50le on tea and Nescafe at the Old Winter Palace. I know it sounds rather outrageous, but you do get three teabags and three sachets of Nescafe, with as much boiling water as you want, and also some nice little homemade cookie things. Plus, they're a different type of tourist to watch, and in unsurpassed surroundings!

On the way home (walking, so as I might lose some weight by getting more exercise as well as limiting my bread intake) we came across the current 'City Farm' a street or two away from us.

(The small part of a white building visible in the top lefthand corner, is the Susanna Hotel on Sharia Karnak.)

This scene was quite unusual, in that a special manger, full of food, was there for the creatures, as well a bucket of water. They're being fattened for the Prophet's Birthday Feast on 24th of this month. I only hope that there'll be gas aplenty to go around for the cooking, I couldn't fancy cold and uncooked goat meat, thank you very much!

A day in the life........!.

It's blinkin' freezing here! Honestly, all I want to do is stay in bed, as snug as a bug in a rug!!!

Dream on, brother; the world doesn't stop because it's cold. Our current guests wanted breakfast at 07:00 this morning, as they were bound for Abydos and Dendera. We were up at six, even before the balloons had taken off I was wiping along the roof terrace handrails.

Mind you, before they would have reached Qena, I was back under the duvet!!! The table was cleared away and the dishes washed in record time, I think. Never mind, the weather is improving from tomorrow, or so Freda tells me.

I had hoped to invite our guests (an Australian couple) to join us in a visit to the hawawshi man at Karnak, but Freda thought they wouldn't come anyway, so off we went this evening with good old Ahmed the caleche man.

We usually park the caleche next to the central reservation of the dual carriageway. It's actually a very wide dual carriageway, and the vast majority of the traffic only uses one side, thus turning it into a single two-way carriageway. They're queer folk these Egyptians, I tell you!

Anyway, we parked there whilst Ahmed went off to get the hawawshi and Freda's macarona. The local gang were congregating in front of us, actually on the central reservation. It started off with a couple of small laddies, about six or seven I think, and a small fire to warm themselves. As the fire was fed with bits of cardboard and odd pieces of expanded polystyrene and broken palm stick crates etc, other slightly older boys arrived. then a three wheeled motorcycle truck arrived with some bigger boys again. They brought with them some sugar cane to chew, they were obviously going to enjoy a good night around their 'central' heating!

On the way back, I wanted to call and see someone (a man about a dog, perhaps?)  about which I'll tell you on another occasion. But his place is at Zawaggy, across the railway lines. Straightforward you'd imagine, but no, this is Luxor, remember?

We got to the very busy traffic island where the airport road joins Sharia Karnak, and Ahmed just drove straight onto the wrong side of the island, with the traffic haring towards us. Thankfully, no-one was killed today, and we escaped the shouting and yelling drivers as we crossed over the bridge which straddles the Kebash Road, to make our way alongside Sphinxes on the Eastern side.

As we neared the next major junction (beside the Two Brothers Coffeeshop) we came across this strange sight:

It really is one of those "Only in Egypt!" pictures, eh? Heaven only knows what the load comprises! See the boy on the top?












From there, we had to negotiate the road down the side of the new flyover. It's always a tight squeeze, which is made even tighter with the extra stalls selling the usual tat and sugar dollies with which they celebrate the birthday of Muhammad.

Emerging from the crush directly under the highest part of the flyover, just beside the Abu Jude level crossing, we found that the crossing was closed altogether! This meant that we had to follow the railway line along to 'our' crossing on Mustapha Kamel Street.

Two problems arose at this point; number one, was that we'd be going the really long way around, but number two was potentially more serious. We would be passing one of the blokes from whom Ahmed buys his horse feed, and he still owed him 75le out of the 300le debt which he had built up before Christmas! Stout fellow that he is (actually, isn't) Ahmed sailed on, and brazenly asked for two bags of grain while handing over slightly less than their value. The poor beggar was shouting after us as we pulled away! (Mind you, he was laughing as well as all of us.)

With the Abu Jude crossing being closed; 'our' crossing is having to cope with twice as much traffic, so it's pretty busy, as you can imagine. The other side of the crossing is now also a dual carriageway, running at right-angles to the actual crossing, with gaps where the traffic can make 'U' turns in order to access the level crossing, or the continuation of Mustapha Kamel Street, from either carriageway. Following the flow of the traffic to the right would mean travelling a couple of hundred metres to the gap, whereas the gap to the left is only about 50 metres away. Yes, you've guessed it; straight into an oncoming mass of (what looked like) a thousand cars and mini-buses and donkey carts and motor bikes, cracking his whip as he went, and demanding that he had right of way because he was driving a horse! I love Ahmed to death, but he doesn't half frighten me at times.

More by luck than good management, I'm sure, we eventually got to where I wanted to be, and the business was conducted successfully. We had an uneventful journey home, collapsing into our seats when we finally made it up the stairs! Still in one piece, al hamdulillah!!!!!

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm?

Hello, and good morning. (Well, it is here in Luxor, anyway!)

I feel a bit more human, now that I've got a dish of porridge inside me. That wasn't the case an hour ago, though! There I was, at about 06:30, floating in dreamland, when all of a sudden I was rudely awakened by a roaring sound; balloons!!!

Of course, they aren't supposed to cross the Nile, but they do when the wind is right. Nothing particularly unusual then? Apart from the fact that there were at least ten balloons up at the same time.

By the time I'd actually roused myself, pulled on a pair of pants and staggered and stumbled onto the roof terrace, four of them were disappearing over Zawagi somewhere, one looked as if he was going to land on our roof, another was disappearing behind the Susanna Hotel (like he had landed on Sharia Karnak) and another four were flying at different heights and distances away,  but all of then seemed to be heading for "Our Luxor". (Perhaps the pilots wanted to show their clients whereabouts they could find really good independent accommodation, lol!)

The last time I took any notice, there were eight balloon companies operating in Luxor, and after the horrific accident of a few years ago, the powers that be changed the regulations to allow only one balloon from each company to actually be in the air at any given time. So what's happened?

I hope that either there are now more balloon companies or that the Air Traffic Control people have rescinded their restriction. But, in the back of my mind, I cannot help but wonder whether the old backhander culture isn't reasserting itself? After all, who wants to turn business away in these hard times, if a few quid in the right pocket will get you what you need?

Here's a selection of bleary-eyed pictures from earlier on this morning:

And here's another one which demonstrates the need for regulation in Egypt:

Yes, yes, I know it's only a donkey cart wheel! But can you imagine the difference between the poor little creature pulling a cart with roller bearings in the wheels and dragging this along? It must be like pulling a cart with the brakes on!

I suppose it's good news seeing so many balloons up, it must mean that there are tourists about, which is what we all hope for, after all.

What a "Carry-On"! (In praise of the humble Barbour Jacket.)

What a Carry-On indeed! We've been travelling back and forward to Luxor for quite some time now, and really thought we had it sorted.

We've brought allsorts of things over from England, and never had to pay excess baggage. The Kirby vacuum cleaner, for instance, and the electric oven for the guest apartment, even the three metre parasol for the roof terrace! They all came as straightforward ordinary baggage!

We found that our 'carry-on' bag just had to fit in the cage for it to be OK, it didn't matter what weight it was, as long as it fit into that measuring device. I've seen the the time I could hardly lift the blessed thing into the overhead locker! Never mind, Flybe have put a slight fly in the ointment!

I need to digress here, just a bit though, it won't take long. Our last travelling cases gave up the ghost on our journey back to England in November, so we needed to replace them with something. Trouble is, that the smaller of the 'sets' of suitcases seem to outlast the larger ones by a fairly big margin, and never mind what we pay or what supposed quality the new set is, they still get ripped, busted or bent beyond recognition by the considerate baggage handlers. We've found that there's no economic sense in buying posh and expensive luggage, so we now usually buy the cheapest available! Which, logically, leads on to the realisation that 'free' must the cheapest of the lot.

Freda found a very useful website a while ago, called 'Freecycle'. It's great, people advertise on it, to let others know what they have which they no longer want, and wish to give away, while other people advertise for things which they would like, but would rather not pay for. I think it was probably helped in its formation by the astronomical charges which local government bodies now extract, from those who finance them in the first place, to take rubbish away from private homes, and can actually save you quite a few quid as well as helping someone else out. Winners all round! Lo and behold, someone in Chopwell (which used to be known as Little Moscow, because of the high concentration of communists who lived there) had two large suitcases to give away. Cutting a long story (of missed appointments and many miles travelled) short, we got the two cases. They're HUGE!

Back to the story, eh? We had quite a bit of extra stuff to bring over with us this time, as several people had hoped that we could help them out with shoes and football boots and trainers and Bisto (An ex-pat Sand Dancer, would you believe?) and a hoody and a Christmas pudding and......the list is endless! But, of course, the weight thingy is the problem isn't it?

We have our luggage scales, and I've got tennis elbow with lifting the blooming cases up and down on the scales so many times! Finally, we got the big case down to 21.8 kilos, and the next one to 18.5, so were reasonably happy that we'd get by with those. The carry-on case was pretty heavy, but that didn't matter. Number One Son gave us a lift to the airport in his lovely estate car, bags of room! After not quite kicking the self-service-check-in-machine to bits, we queued to hand over our baggage.

To cut yet another long story short; our luggage scales may as well go in the bin, for what blinkin' use they are, and we spent about 15 minutes with all the cases open on the airport floor. Yes, Flybe's policy is that, in addition to fitting in the cage, carry-on bags must not weigh more than 10kgs! Plus, both of our bags to go in the hold were also overweight!

Now then, we've all heard about these fancy waistcoat jobbies, which have poachers pockets here there and everywhere, in order to carry a further 10 kilos on board? Well, if you have a trusty old Barbour jacket, you needn't go out and buy one of those. My Barbour weighed 9.5 kgs (I asked the lady to check it on her scales) by the time we left her counter. In my standard Barbour, I managed to get: 8 'Oldie' magazines, 9 Private Eye magazines,

 1 Dell Laptop, 1 (Christmas present) Android Tablet, 2 Jamaica Ginger Cakes,

1 kilo Asda Pastry Mix, 1 kilo Asda Crumble Mix, the camera, half a packet of Haggis and Cracked Black Pepper crisps (from M&S, you've just got to try them!!!!) and a half packet of Aldi Ginger Biscuits! Well done that Barbour jacket, it certainly saved our day, if we'd had bacon I could have said that it had saved our bacon, couldn't I?

At the Gatwick Travelodge, we had another sort through the cases as we tried to save the cakes from being entirely squashed and things like that. I'd bought three steak pies from John the Butcher, one plain steak, one steak and onion and a third with steak and mushroom. I was sure that Freda would like at least one! These were still in good condition, being packed in the giant case, and went down very well with the extra tea and extra little cartons of milk which I blagged from the Travelodge receptionist.

When we finally got to the easyJet check-in, after standing in an 800 foot queue (roughly calculated from the size and number of floor tiles between the posts holding the seatbelt type straps which fashioned the queue into a snake, winding across the floor in front of the check-in desks 10 times ) for an hour, the two big cases weighed in at one tenth of a kilogramme under the overall limit. AlHamdulillah!

The flight was greatly eased by the munching of a ham and something quiche, which Freda purchased in the airport, along with a tuna and mayo sandwich and a bottle of very expensive water. I have to say, though, that my new toy (the Tablet) was fab! I had downloaded the Arabian Nights (Edward Lanes translation) from Kindle for £1.29 and read from it while listening to a folk trio, from Kettering, known as Hex, whose CD I also got for Christmas. (Entitled "Sleep when you're dead") I've got to say that I'm enjoying the CD immensely, they're like a cross between the Watersons and Swan Arcade. (Not the most popular or well known artistes, but right at the top of their genre, believe me!)

 It turned out to be one of our most pleasant flights of late!

We were pleased to get back home to Luxor, nevertheless, and the CLEANING!!!!

Obviously, we've had to be out and about a bit, and in doing so we came across a couple of shops we'd never seen before:

I've been forced to watch this drivel on the telly for the sake of my beautiful granddaughter Kezia, but I really think that she was above it anyway!

The last one isn't quite the right shade of blue to be a Cadbury's Caramel, but that's certainly part of the Cadbury logo! Only in Egypt, eh?

When we called at the Nile Palace for tea and Nescafe, we realised that we were really 'home', when we were welcomed by our old saxophone playing friend:

Yes indeed, only in Egypt! See you soon.